Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Article Title: Thermal Transmittance of Exterior Walls Using the Composite Illite Clay - Cork
by Soumia Mounir, Abdelhamid Khabbazi, Asmae Khaldoun, Youssef Maaloufa

Abstract:
The development of insulating materials using materials suitable for sustainable buildings development and poverty alleviation by the decrease of their energy consumption and the increase of the comfort of its inhabitant with very low income is very crucial. For this purpose, a series of experimental studies were performed on a type of clay samples, the clay is taken from a mountainous zone in Morocco and was analyzed by the mean of X-ray diffraction. The results show that the clay sample is mainly made up of Illite/muscovite which is a non-swelling clay.Hot plate method and Flash methods were carried out on unfired clay/cork bricks prepared at different proportion of cork. The density of the cork used in this study is 160 Kg/m3, the thermal conductivity is 0.049-0.05W.m-1.K-1. The results obtained indicate that for the Illite clay, the thermal conductivity decrease by adding cork from 0.51 W.m-1.K-1 (for clay alone) to 0.32 W.m-1.K-1 (60% of cork), to 0.259 (80% of cork), to 0.246 W.m-1.K-1 (for 100% of cork). Finally a comparison of thermal transmittance of exterior walls in Morocco and Mediterranean area for instance Italy was done from the composite material clay-cork air dried using the thermal blocks (Illite clay-100% cork) instead of the existing standard thermal block to see their effect on the energy efficiency of building.

Keywords: composite illite clay, hot plate method, flash method, thermal conductivity, thermal block air dried

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